This chapter charts the rise and fall of Virgil’s Carthage to explore some of the ways in which the paradoxical resonances of this city are productive of a sublimity that expresses its ambivalent status in the Aeneid. Under construction in Book 1, Carthage surges up before us offering a glimpse of the city’s glorious Augustan refoundation, but also a vision of the nascent Punic menace that would become Rome’s greatest enemy. In Book 4, Carthage has lapsed into an almost ruinous state threatening imminent collapse, a threat partly realised in the image of the city’s destruction that is a fantasy of its Roman conquest (4.669–70). From the start of the poem, though, it is clear that this city is not just Carthage, it is also Troy and Rome, so the vision of its destruction is not only a reassuring affirmation of Rome’s eventual triumph but a disturbing reminder of vulnerability. Virgil’s paradoxical Carthage encapsulates the Burkean sensation of the sublime ‘delight’ that ‘turns on pain’, its Augustan space sublime and thrillingly unstable.

Unlike in the West where the Roman municipal model was almost uniformly spread over the various provinces, Greek cities in the East during the Imperial period were very proud of their own centuries-old political traditions and consequently were reluctant to adopt Roman institutions. However, many cities celebrated the emperor as their ‘founder’ or were renamed after a Roman emperor, such as, for example, ‘Kaisareia’. Other cities deliberately chose pictures referring to Roman foundation practices to appear on their coins (e.g. the plowing scene) or took—formally or informally—the title of ‘koloneia’, normally reserved for communities which were part of the Roman State. This chapter aims at examining which cities were ready to comply with the Roman colonial model, why they did so, to what extent, and what the meaning of their claim for Roman origins was. It argues that the issue of the compliance of Greek cities with the Roman constitutional model of a colony was a way for them to negotiate their position within the Roman empire and was an aspect of cultural interaction.

Unlike in the West where the Roman municipal model was almost uniformly spread over the various provinces, Greek cities in the East during the Imperial period were very proud of their own centuries-old political traditions and consequently were reluctant to adopt Roman institutions. However, many cities celebrated the emperor as their ‘founder’ or were renamed after a Roman emperor, such as, for example, ‘Kaisareia’. Other cities deliberately chose pictures referring to Roman foundation practices to appear on their coins (e.g. the plowing scene) or took—formally or informally—the title of ‘koloneia’, normally reserved for communities which were part of the Roman State. This chapter aims at examining which cities were ready to comply with the Roman colonial model, why they did so, to what extent, and what the meaning of their claim for Roman origins was. It argues that the issue of the compliance of Greek cities with the Roman constitutional model of a colony was a way for them to negotiate their position within the Roman empire and was an aspect of cultural interaction.